CHAPTER XI.
STORY OF NINON DE L'ENCLOS.
Ninon, I have said, had lovers when verging on her ninetieth year! Whence came this mystery? Like Poppæa Sabina, the second wife of Nero, Ninon is averred to have preserved her wondrous beauty unimpaired to extreme old age, by using baths of asses' milk; but it was neither these, nor the famous cosmetic, so long known among our Parisian belles as Crême de l'Enclos, the component parts of which are milk, lemon-juice and brandy, which preserved the dazzling complexion and delicate skin of Ninon for so many years untouched by Time; but a spell wrought upon her by the great master of evil, whom she served throughout a long and wasted life.
It would seem as if Time, the destroyer of all things, failed to impair the charms of Ninon, at least entirely, for he could not deprive her of her marvellous power to win and seduce; thus, at her age of ninety, does not the Abbé Chaulieu say? "that Cupid had retreated even into the lines of her forehead." Hence in age she was worshipped for her beauty, by the grandsons of those who had loved her in the bloom of her youth!
Ninon was born at Paris in May, 1616, during the reign of Louis XIII. Her father was a gallant, but dissipated gentleman of Touraine, who had fought in the battles of Henry the Great. Her mother was Mademoiselle de Raconis, a lady of Orleans, from whom she inherited her beauty and gaiety of disposition. Monsieur de l'Enclos was passionately fond of music, and inspired his daughter with the same taste, so that in girlhood she became mistress of the lute, the harp and guitar; but Madame de l'Enclos, who destined her for a convent, was averse to such accomplishments as frivolities, and was careful to take her daughter to Notre Dame twice daily—that is, to morning mass and to evening vespers; but little Ninon always substituted for her missal some little volume of poetry, or a romance which she read under her veil, as she knelt before the altar, thus her responses were often very odd ones.
Before she was ten years of age she had all Charron and Montaigne by heart, and spoke with fluency the Spanish and Italian languages.
In her fifteenth year, the death of her parents left Ninon the mistress of her own actions, with a fortune of ten thousand livres per annum.
Her loveliness was then divine! Her form was finely proportioned, her complexion singularly delicate; her face was a fine oval, and long dark lashes with drooping lids gave a charming softness to her sparkling hazel eyes. Her hair was a rich golden brown, and fell about her neck in wavy profusion. Her little nostrils, her rosy mouth and chin were perfect!
In temper she was at times violent and imperious, and her disposition had this peculiarity, that while even eager and lively about trifles that affected herself, she was too often carelessly cold and selfishly indifferent about all that concerned others.
She was born to be a coquette, and the spirit of gallantry, with the desire to charm, win and enslave, pervaded her whole existence. She was the centre of Parisian fashion; lovers she had in plenty, and if she desired to marry, some of the proudest titles in France were at her disposal; but Ninon, whom her mother had destined for the service of God, preferred a life of perfect freedom—such freedom as the days of Louis "the Just" permitted, with independence and intrigue—to live, not for others, but for herself alone.
We shall see how all this ended.
One night in the year 1633, she was seated alone in a room of her house in the Rue de Parlement, behind the Palais-Royal. Her lovers, the Counts de Coligné and Jersey, and her favourite friends, the Comtesse de la Suze, D'Olonne, and the Duchesse de Bouillon-Mancini, the cripple Abbé Scarron, M. de Sévigné, and others, had all retired and departed in their carriages or sedans, and Ninon was now seated before a mirror in that famous boudoir, the walls of which, as history tells us, were decorated with frescoes, that illustrated the story of Cupid and Pysche.
Ninon was now only in her seventeenth year. She observed that she was very pale, that her round cheeks were colourless, and some remarks made by the Abbé Scarron on the decay of youth, the fading of beauty, the gradual advance of years, made the young girl thoughtful; and she was too intelligent and too well-read to be without reflection, so she thought of the future with forebodings, for already had late hours and gaiety robbed her of her roses.
Arrayed for conquest, who at that time could have competed with Ninon? Round her slender neck she wore the collet-monti, or standing collar, which disappeared with Louis XIV.; her fine hair was delicately sprinkled with perfumed maréchal powder; a kissing-patch, like a tiny star, was in one of the dimples at the corner of her rosy mouth, and her robe of silver gauze was looped in ample festoons, to display the petticoat of crimson brocade beneath.
Would a time ever come when she would be covered with wrinkles, like the Comtesse de la Suze, or when her most passionate lover, the gay young English Count of Jersey* would weary of her? Oh, mon Dieu! it was not to be thought of with patience.
* William Villiers, Viscount Grandison, then known in France by that title.
At that moment Guillot, her valet, tapped at the door of her boudoir.
"Who is there?" she asked, impatiently.
"A stranger, who would speak with you, mademoiselle," replied Guillot.
"A stranger, and at this hour! What is his name?"
"He declines to give it."
"Ridiculous! Is he armed?"
"No, mademoiselle."
"Is he young or handsome?"
"No, mademoiselle; he is very old and shabbily dressed."
"Then say I am ill, weary, busy, engaged with company, or what you please, Guillot; only do not trouble me with him."
The valet bowed and retired, but soon returned.
"He says, mademoiselle, that he knows you are alone, that you are neither ill nor weary, nor busy, for which reason he has chosen to visit you at present. That he has come from a long distance, and has a secret of vast importance to communicate to you."
"A pertinacious old fool!" muttered Ninon; "but admit him."
The stranger entered, and with a cunning leer in his eyes surveyed the chamber, particularly the frescoes of Cupid and Pysche, and then they rested on Ninon, who for a moment, she knew not why, felt the young blood curdle in her heart beneath his sparkling glance.
Her visitor was a little, decrepit old man with shrunken limbs. His coat and breeches, "a world too wide," were of black serge, and large black japanned buckles covered three-fourths of his shoes. He wore a high conical hat with a very narrow brim. This he removed on entering, but still retained on his head an old-fashioned calotte cap of black velvet, the lappets of which hung down by his withered cheeks.
His appearance betokened extreme old age, but one that was healthy and vigorous withal; for his eyes, which glittered and sometimes glared through his black horn spectacles, were wondrously large, keen, and bright; and his hair, instead of being grey or thin, was stuffed in masses, coal-black and coarse, under the calotte cap.
"Good evening, my dear Mademoiselle de L'Enclos," said this singular little personage, with a blunt and familiar, but smiling nod.
"It is almost morning, monsieur," replied Ninon, with petulance; "the clock of the Palais Royal has just struck midnight, so pray what is your business with me at such an hour?"
"That you shall learn, mademoiselle, when your valet retires, but not till then," replied the little man, with a withering glance at Guillot.
Ninon was somewhat alarmed on hearing this; but being impelled by an irresistible power, she made a sign to the wondering valet, who withdrew and closed the door. Then the quaint old man immediately opened it, and on finding that Guillot lingered with an ear at the keyhole, he gave him a glance so piercing, that he retired with considerable precipitation.
"Now, monsieur, your business?" said Ninon.
"Were I young and handsome, like the Count de Jersey, perchance you would be less impatient," replied the impudent old man, with a horrible grin, while applying the forefinger of his right hand to the side of his hooked nose, and winking one of his wicked eyes; "yet confess, my beauty, that your heart sinks when you look on me?"
"It does," murmured Ninon, who felt, she knew not why, on the verge of fainting, and fascinated by the dark stranger's glittering eyes.
"Be not alarmed," he resumed, blandly, and with an expression in those serpent-like orbs that was not a smile; "you have nothing to fear from me—as yet."
"As yet!" repeated Ninon, breathlessly.
"Listen, mademoiselle," said he, striking his long silver-headed cane on the floor; "you see before you one whom all mankind—yea, and womankind, too—obey and fear; one whom Nature hath endowed with the rare power of dispensing wondrous gifts. I was present at your birth——"
"You?"
"I; and from that hour I have watched your career, sedulously, and with satisfaction, though unseen."
"This is folly or raving!" exclaimed Ninon, gathering courage, and stretching out her beautiful hand towards a bell; but a sharp, fierce glance from the old man's great goggle eyes restrained her, and she said, gently, "What is your object?"
"To inquire what lot you wish for yourself in life."
"My present one is brilliant enough. I have an income of ten thousand livres, a house here in Paris, another at the Cordeliers, a circle of delightful friends, and lovers in plenty."
"Friends change and lovers too; beauty fades, youth becomes age, and age becomes wearisome and hideous."
"True; but I am only seventeen—for seventeen years more, at least, I shall be beautiful."
"You will then be four-and-thirty, mademoiselle, when beauty begins to fade and the ripe bloom of youth is past. Then old age will come, and that is what my friend De la Rochefoucault terms 'the hell of women.'
"Your object, I repeat, monsieur?" asked Ninon, glancing at the clock and yawning without disguise.
"I come to give you the choice of three gifts; firstly, the highest honours in France; secondly, splendid wealth; and thirdly, eternal beauty. The world does not possess another being who could make you the same offers as I."
"You are either a quack or a fool," said Ninon, imperiously, as she laid her hand on the bell to summon Guillot; but again the great eyes of the quaint old man daunted her.
"Choose," said he, emphatically; "I have no time for trifling; rank, wealth, or a beauty that shall endure without change for four score years at least."
"Then give me the latter—eternal beauty, that I may have lovers and adorers for ever," said Ninon, laughing; "but pray, my dear old man, how is such a gift to be acquired?"
"By yourself, mademoiselle; it is very simple. Write your name with your own lovely hand, in this book; swear to me secrecy for life, and the thing is done."
He bowed, and advancing, laid before her a very handsome pocket-book, bound in scarlet, and richly gilt.
Ninon, heedless of the matter, and neither believing in, nor caring for his assumed powers, laughingly gave the promise he required, and wrote her name in his tablets, which he instantly closed, and consigned to his deep breeches pocket.
"Now, mademoiselle," said the little man, with a chuckle and a grimace, as he waved his hands towards her, "receive the power of possessing eternal beauty, the power of controlling every heart, and being beloved for long, long years, after all who know and love you now are consigned to the silent tomb."
"All?" said Ninon, almost sadly, as she thought of the Count de Jersey, while a strange thrill passed over all her body, and a sensation like the pricking of needles. Recovering herself, however, she said, with a pouting lip, "Monsieur, you jest."
"That is not my habit," responded the old man, with a wicked grin; "but when I do jest, few laugh at me, even in Paris, which I can remember when celebrated for the extreme gravity of its inhabitants."
"When was this?"
"In the days of my friend Julian the apostate, who says, in his amusing book, the 'Misopognon,' that he loves our dear Parisians on account of their gravity."
"Who are you that say such things, and pretend to so much power?" asked Ninon, with displeasure.
"I am one who has known this lower world, its heartlessness and trickery, its crooked ways and its wickedness, for exactly six thousand years, six months, fourteen days, eleven hours, and fifty-five minutes—the clock of the Palais Royal is ten minutes fast, mademoiselle. Adieu; I shall keep faith with you. Your beauty shall last as I have said, and we shall meet twice again."
"When?"
"Once at your house of the Cordeliers, and again in Paris, during the next century."
"The next century!" repeated Ninon, with a laugh; "and this is but 1633."
"Exactly—adieu, mademoiselle," and placing his conical hat jauntily on one side of his moplike head of coarse black hair, the old man put his cane under his arm and bowed himself out.
How the enchanting Ninon slept that night we have no means of knowing. In the morning she would have deemed the whole affair a dream, but for the solemn and reiterated assertions of her valet, who had ushered in the nocturnal visitor; and a dream she might ultimately have thought it, had she not found that, beyond all doubt, as years rolled on, as her young companions became old, faded, and withered, and were gathered to the tomb, she still remained youthful, blooming, full of health and spirit, and the possessor of unimpaired loveliness.
The Count de Jersey joined King Charles I., and died in 1643 of a wound received at the siege of Bristol. But the heartless Ninon soon forgot him, and others supplied his place.
Louis XIII. and Cardinal Richelieu were taken to their last home; Louis XIV. succeeded—the Augustan age of France—the age which gave her such soldiers as Turenne and Condé, such literati as Racine, Corneille, and Molière, such orators as Massillon, Bossuet, and Lamothe Fénélon, and which saw the exiled Stuarts repining at St. Germain; but still Ninon was young and lovely. She sedulously cultivated the fashions of each age, and wore the extreme of the mode—from the starched ruff of Louis the Thirteenth's time, to the coiffure à la giraffe—the towering head-dresses of the early part of the eighteenth century.
As Le Sage says of Donna Inesilla (under which name he introduces Ninon in his novel of "Gil Blas") "she had been idolized by the noblemen of the old court, and saw herself adored by those of the new. Time, that spares not even beauty, had exerted itself upon hers in vain; he could not deprive her of the power to please, and a noble air, an enchanting wit, and graces that were peculiar to her, made her inspire men with passion, even in her old age."
So was it with Ninon, save that her beauty never decayed.
In her fifty-sixth year she was residing in her little country villa at the Cordeliers. It was delightfully situated, and was surrounded by a beautiful landscape, and there she usually spent the months of summer. During this year she had also spent the autumn there, to avoid a young cavalier, who had followed her constantly about the streets and public places of Paris, and whose attentions thus had caused her serious annoyance—all the more, perhaps, that the young man seemed somewhat poor, though very handsome and extremely well-bred.
One evening Ninon was alone. She was reading "Les Amours du Grand Alcandre," under which name her father's comrade, the gay Maréchal Duc de Bassompierre, narrated some of the love affairs of Henri Quatre, when her page, the grandson of Guillot, announced that a gentleman in black, who would not give his name, desired to speak with her.
She instantly thought of the mysterious visitor of 1633, and tremblingly said that he might be admitted. Contrary to her expectation, there entered a very handsome young man, about four-and-twenty years of age, dressed in a black velvet suit, slashed with white satin, and wearing a steel-hilted rapier slung in a white silk scarf. He knelt before her, and the volume of Bassompierre fell from her hand when she recognised the unknown lover who had followed her like her shadow about the streets of Paris.
"Monsieur," said she, "you weary me! What is the object of your visit—and what is your name?"
"Mademoiselle," said he, in trembling accents, and with a flushing cheek, "I am the Chevalier Guillaume de Villiers."
At this name Ninon started and grew deadly pale.
"A lieutenant in the regiment of Artois?" she asked.
"The same, madame; but how know you that?"
"It matters not how; but proceed."
"I was severely wounded when Turenne forced the Spanish lines at Arras, and again on our retreat from Valenciennes, by the ball of an arquebuss. The viscount sent me on leave to Paris. There I saw you, mademoiselle, and have dared to—to love you in secret—to love you passionately!"
Ninon, who had been regarding the speaker with mournful interest, now arose and sprang back in dismay; for this Chevalier de Villiers—this handsome young man, so pale, so sad, and gentle-eyed, was no other than her own son, whom since his birth she had secluded in the provinces; who never knew either his mother, or his father—the Count de Jersey; and who now by a strange fatality, in ignorance of their relationship, had fallen madly in love with her!
Then followed that terrible episode which is so powerfully reproduced in "Gil Blas."
Perceiving her confusion, and being dazzled by her marvellous beauty, the young officer took her hands in his, and covered them with kisses; but Ninon started back, and exclaimed—
"Beware, rash boy, and listen to me!" Then pointing to the clock on the mantel-piece, she added, "Look there! at this very hour, four-and-twenty years ago, I was secretly delivered of you, Guillaume de Villiers, in this very chamber. I am your mother!"*
* This episode is mentioned in the "Memoirs of Ninon de l'Enclos," 2 vols.; published in 1776. The story of her compact with Satan is an old legend of Paris.
Abashed and terrified, filled with mortification and shame—after a terrible pause—the young man drew his long rapier; and ere Ninon could conceive or arrest his purpose, he placed the hilt on the floor, and sprung upon the blade, which passed through his heart, and killed him on the spot.
Inspired with horror by this sudden catastrophe, Ninon clung to the mantel-piece; but a loud chuckling laugh made her look up,—and lo!
At one of the open windows of her chamber there stood a little old man clad in sad coloured garments of an antique fashion; his shock-head of black hair was surmounted by a conical hat, which he waggishly wore very much on one side, and he was sucking the silver knob of his cane. Through his round horn spectacles his eyes glared on Ninon with a malignant smile she had no difficulty in remembering. He made her a low ironical bow, and hobbled away with another chuckling laugh which made her blood curdle.
Her lively nature survived even this shock! She returned to her house near the Palais Royal, and amid the gaieties of Paris, and her circle of friends and admirers, among whom were some of the greatest wits in Paris, such as Rochefoucault, St. Evremond, La Bruyere, and others—a circle that was ever being renewed, she soon forgot the doubly horrid episode of her house at the Cordeliers.
Christina, Queen of Sweden, became one of her friends when at Paris, and was so charmed by her conversation, that at parting she declared to the whole court that she had "never met with any woman in France to compare with the illustrious Ninon." The latter was in her sixty-fifth year when the famous General Sir John Banier (the comrade of Gustavus Adolphus), who fought at Magdeburg and Leipzig, threw himself at her feet, as the poor Chevalier de Villiers and many more had done; but Ninon only laughed, and said—
"My dear general, you will find that it requires more genius to make love than to make war."
So time passed on, and, as I have said, at the age of fourscore Ninon was still to all appearance young, and so charming, that the Abbé Gedoine, a youth of twenty, who had fluttered about her house in the Rue de Parlement, became madly in love with her; but Ninon was tiring now of lovers, and even of life itself.
"Ah, Ninon," said the abbé, "love has too long been alike your amusement and your occupation."
"My dear abbé," she replied, "the most brief follies are the best. I perceive now, when it is somewhat too late, that it was an absurd step in me to accept of you as an admirer. Let us carry the frolic no farther, but fairly quit each other this instant; and for the term of our natural lives."
Thus, after inspiring a youth of twenty with a real passion for her, was Ninon, in her eightieth year, the first to break off from him. In short, from her first boy-lover, the Count de Coligni, when she was only seventeen, to the advent of the Abbé Gedoine, her long life had been a succession of conquests.
In the first days of October, 1706, an illness of a kind so peculiar that it baffled the best physicians in Paris—a languor, wasting and helplessness fell upon Ninon, but amid it she looked lovelier than ever, though she was then ninety years and five months old!
In succession had the doctors come and gone, surprised and bewildered by a malady for which they had neither a name nor a remedy. At last there came one whom no one knew, and who requested to see Ninon alone.
He was a decrepit, but hale little man, very old apparently, though his hair was coal-black. He wore a dark suit, an absurd conical hat, and large horn spectacles, and leaned on a silver-headed cane, which at every pace he planted firmly on the pavement, as if he had a very good opinion of himself. In his left hand he carried a pocket-book of scarlet morocco, richly gilt—doubtless his book of pharmacy.
Propped upon a pillow, the dying Ninon—for she was dying now—regarded him with an awful expression in her hollow eyes.
"Do you remember me, madame?" he was heard to say, by those who loitered or listened without.
"But too well," moaned the patient.
"Yet fair ladies have often brief memories."
"And I have been your dupe! Begone, fiend—you are powerless, and I defy you!"
The old man uttered his chuckling laugh.
"Begone, I say, to that hell from hence you have come."
"Then I go not alone!" was the strange response, and there rung through the chamber a shriek of agony, and with it mingled the strange demoniac laughter of the little man in black. The listeners heard also the stamping of his feet, and exclamations of rage; then all became still—terribly still.
When the door, which had hitherto defied their efforts to force it, was opened, the stranger could nowhere be found; he had disappeared, hat, stick, spectacles and all; but they found Ninon, and she was no more.
The coverlet and other clothes were disordered, the silk hangings torn; the bed bore evidence that a fierce struggle had taken place; but great was the astonishment of all on beholding the rapid change that came over her remains, even while they gazed on them.
They were no longer those of the seeming young and lovely beauty they had known so long, but were turning fast into those of an extremely aged person. The oval face became haggard; the smooth forehead a mass of wrinkles; the pearly teeth disappeared; the lovely tresses of silky brown turned into a few white straggling hairs, and the plump pretty hands became shrivelled and yellow.
Thus within one minute the remains of the once enchanting Ninon turned into those of an old—hideously old—woman, who had died of strangulation, for on her withered neck remained several marks, made by the ferocious clutch of that black stranger, who could never more be traced.
This was on the evening of the 17th of October, 1706.